When we need to quickly summarize an event, idea, or text, a 101-level synopsis won’t always do the trick. Sometimes the text is more complicated -- it contains a central tension or conflict that needs to be addressed. In that case, a Pivot Synopsis will do the trick. It’s the more nuanced cousin of Synopsis 101 that allows a writer to say something more sophisticated while still summarizing quickly.

Mentor Texts:
“The question of humanness troubles the clones, as well as sympathetic individuals like the guardians. On Hailsham’s mission, one of the guardians Miss Emily proclaims, “Most importantly, we demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being.” The liberal-minded guardians invested in the students’ cultural education not only with the aim of improving their quality of living, but also to establish that their lives were worth saving. Working against the rationalization of science, the guardians looked to the students’ creativity as the truer measure of their being human.” -Mimi Wong, “Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is a Masterpiece of Racial Metaphor”, Electric Lit

Explore this documentary film clip and engage students in historical thinking using the Library of Congress Primary Source Analysis Tool. In this inquiry-based resource for Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom, students view a video clip describing Harriet Tubman's childhood in Dorchester County, Maryland, analyze primary source documents and images from the Library of Congress, and consider discussion prompts for more dialogue and deeper reflection.

Come learn how easy it is to create beautiful, effective school newsletters with smore.com. Product experts show off the tool, spark ideas and giveaway fun swag!

Come learn how easy it is to create beautiful, effective school newsletters with smore.com. Product experts show off the tool, spark ideas and giveaway fun swag!

In this video produced for Teachers' Domain, Chi-An Wang, a mechanical engineering graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes her process when working with New Balance to design a new triathlon shoe.

Students will create menus for a restaurants in small groups. The class will use them as a basis to order a healthy meal. Students need to know the difference between an "everyday food" and a "sometimes food." "Everyday foods" provide excellent fuel for the body to work efficiently and "sometimes foods" provide inferior fuel to the body. We CHOOSE what food to put into our bodies. When we choose healthy foods, our bodies work better and we live longer, stronger lives. If we select unhealthy foods to eat most of the time,our bodies will have trouble working efficiently and will place us at an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease or stroke.

This is a lesson for preschool students. In this lesson, students will learn about the importance of eating healthy and how to make good food choices. They will learn about the five food groups and be able to categorize food into the correct food groups. This lesson follows the following core standards: Strand 4: Nutritions- Students will understand why food choices are important, Standard HE 4.1 Identify a variety of healthy foods, Standard HE 4.2-Identify healthy food and begin to categorize into food groups, Standard 4.3  Try new foods from a variety of food groups.Image Citation: food healthy flyer landscape by yellow bananas from Canva created by Suzanne McMillan

This may be a helpful resource to support teachers in developing artifacts of learning about the six basic nutrients and their functions.

This resource is a Health student activity that utilizes Utah's Online Library resources - specifically the Gale databases of InfoTrac Student Edition and Student Resources in Context - for conducting research about eating disorders.

How many calories are in your favorite foods? How much exercise would you have to do to burn off these calories? What is the relationship between calories and weight? Explore these issues by choosing diet and exercise and keeping an eye on your weight.

This is a second grade lesson plan about nutrition and building blanaced meals. In this lesson, students will review the five food groups and create a video presentation showing a balanced meal they created with their family. This lesson plan was created by Sydney Blake. It aligns with 2nd Grade Standard 5 Nutrition - Standard 2.N.1: Identify food and beverage choices that contribute to good health. https://www.uen.org/core/core.do?courseNum=7020

Students will learn about interactions between objects in the solar system that influence phenomena observed from Earth. This includes both solar and lunar eclipses. They will develop and use a model of the Sun-Earth-Moon system to describe the eclipses of the Sun and Moon. 

EcoForesters is a non-profit professional forestry organization dedicated to conserving and restoring our Appalachian forests through education and stewardship

The Ecoforestry Institute Society (EIS) is a registered non-profit, charitable society comprised of a volunteer Board and a strong core of community volunteers.

This lesson is about the flow of energy in ecosystems. The setting is Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA, where students will learn about the first Thanksgiving meal in America, celebrated in 1621 by early American settlers and Wampanoag Indians. By examining this meal and comparing it to a modern day Thanksgiving celebration, students will be able to explore the way in which food energy moves and is transformed in an ecosystem. The learning goals focus on the movement of energy from one feeding level to the next within a food web, the way in which energy changes form, and the inefficiency of energy transfer, which in turn affects the availability of food energy for organisms at the highest feeding level. The lesson is directed at high school level biology students. Students should be familiar already with food webs, food chains, and trophic (feeding) levels. They should also be familiar with the general equations for photosynthesis (CO2 + H2O => C6H12O6) and cell respiration (C6H12O6 => CO2 + H2O), and understand the basic purpose of these processes in nature. This lesson can be completed during one long classroom period, or can be divided over two or more class meetings. The duration of the lesson will depend on prior knowledge of the students and on the amount of time allotted for student discussion. There are no supplies required for this lesson other than the downloadable worksheets (accessed on this BLOSSOMS site), paper and some glue or tape.

The major goal of this lesson is to provide students with some of the tools they will need to analyze and solve the many complex problems they will face during their lifetimes. In the lesson, students learn to use Flow Charts and Feedback Diagrams to analyze a very complex problem of ecological sustainability. The lesson looks at a specific case study—from my home town in the Philippines—of the Live Reef Fish Trade now threatening survival of the Coral Reef Triangle of Southeast Asia. Live reef fish have long been traded around Southeast Asia as a luxury food item, but in recent decades trade in fish captured on coral reefs has expanded rapidly. Although the trade has provided communities with additional income, these benefits are unsustainable and have come at considerable cost to the environment. This lesson begins by having students analyze a familiar or personal problem, using Flow Charts and Feedback Diagrams, and then moves on to the application of those tools to a complex environmental problem. The lesson could be completed in a 50-minute class session, but using it over two class sessions would be preferable. Everything needed for the lesson is downloadable from the BLOSSOMS website, including blank Flow Charts and Feedback Diagrams, as well as articles on the Philippines case study from the World Wildlife Fund and the United States Agency for International Development.

Ecosystems are shaped by interactions among living organisms and their physical environment. A food chain shows the energy flow through organisms in an environment. A food pyramid shows loss of energy in a food chain.

The arrows illustrate one possible energy path in an ecosystem, from sun to seaweed to iguana.

This food web demonstrates the interconnection between living things in a complex ecosystem.